Jimmy Hoffa
James Riddle "Jimmy" Hoffa (14 February 1913 – 30 July 1975) was an American labor union leader who served as President of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters from 1958 to 1971, succeeding Dave Beck and preceding Frank Fitzsimmons. Hoffa was known for his corruption and his ties to organized crime, and he was ultimately murdered by the American Mafia in 1975 for threatening to go public about his links to the Detroit Partnership member Carol D'Allesandro. Biography Early life and activism , Billy Flynn, and Jimmy Hoffa in 1935]]James Riddle Hoffa was born in Brazil, Indiana, United States on 14 February 1913 to a father of Pennsylvania Dutch descent and a mother of English descent. His father died when he was seven, and the family moved to Detroit, Michigan in 1924. Hoffa became a manual laborer at the age of fourteen to support his family, and he rose to a leadership position in a grocery chain union while he was just a teenager, becoming a union organizer at a young age. In 1932, he became an organizer for Teamsters Local 299 after being fired from his job, and he was instrumental in expanding the Teamsters' membership across the Midwest, although many workers were fired for becoming unionized. Detroit labor activism In 1935, Hoffa met Italian-American truck driver Bobby Ciaro, who became his right-hand man after his original henchman Billy Flynn was killed during the arson bombing of the Idle Hour Laundry. Ciaro helped Hoffa with making an agreement with the Detroit Partnership of the American Mafia, which initially considered killing Hoffa due to his interference with their unfair labor practices; Hoffa instead offered to have some trucks go off course so that the Mafia could steal them, giving them a profit even as the Teamsters went on strike. Hoffa's alliance with the Mafia would allow for his union to grow strong, and he was disappointed when his successful boycott of Kreger's grocery chain was credited to Red Bennett, who was made business director of the local instead of a disappointed Hoffa. However, Hoffa was loved by the Teamsters, who formed an army to assist him with the 1942 Railroad Transport Agency strike, which ended in a massacre of the unionized workers by the non-unionized workers. Rise to power In December 1946, Hoffa became president of Local 299, despite never having worked as a truck driver. In 1952, Dave Beck named him national vice-president for supporting Beck's candidacy as IBT president, and he moved to Washington DC in 1955 when the IBT headquarters was moved there from Indianapolis. In 1958, he became the new president of the Teamsters after Beck was indicted for corruption, and his first steps in office were to fire all of Beck's staffers, including his longtime rival Red Bennett, and to bring cronies such as Frank Fitzsimmons and his nephew Peter Connelly to power; Ciaro remained Hoffa's chief lieutenant. Hoffa maintained his links to the Mafia, with mobster Carol D'Allesandro being his closest mob ally. Hoffa drew up the idea for a "test fleet", a racketeering scheme, and he managed to prevent a Detroit newspaper from publishing an article about Test Fleet after sending severed male genitalia to the editor. The Senate Labor Subcommittee failed to indict Hoffa in 1957, with counsel Robert F. Kennedy making enemies with Hoffa; Hoffa was infuriated when Kennedy insinuated that there may have been a possibility that Hoffa was, or was associated with, communists (Harry Bridges and Louis Goldblatt were Communist Party USA members, and Hoffa said that there was no doubt that Hoffa was not a communist, categorizing him with the two communists). After his re-election in 1961, he set out to build up the power of the Teamsters. In 1964, however, he was successfully indicted for a pension scheme fund after Connelly ratted him out to the US Senate in exchange for immunity; Connelly showed the court a hunting license on which Hoffa and D'Allesandro had written down their plans to give pension fund loans to the Mafia. In 1967, after three years of appeals, Hoffa and Ciaro were sent to prison, and he made Fitzsimmons acting president. Release from prison In 1970, Hoffa was released from prison after the Teamsters endorsed Republican Party presidential candidate Richard Nixon, who became president in 1969. Frank Fitzsimmons, who had been serving as acting president, never visited Hoffa in prison, and he instead cemented his own control over the union and made a deal with Nixon that forced Hoffa to resign as Teamsters president in exchange for his early release from prison. Hoffa was also banned from returning to the union for ten years, and Hoffa was infuriated when Fitzsimmons told him about the deal behind closed doors. Hoffa attempted to have Fitzsimmons killed by a Mafia car bomb, but the bomb instead killed a mechanic; Fitzsimmons had moved away from his car to speak with a journalist. D'Allesandro refused to get close to Hoffa, who was attracting too much heat from law enforcement, so Hoffa sent Ciaro to meet with D'Allesandro. Ciaro told D'Allesandro that Hoffa intended to go to the press if D'Allesandro did not kill Fitzsimmons, and D'Allesandro, feeling threatened, decided to have Hoffa killed. He told Hoffa and Ciaro to meet him at the roadhouse diner in remote Bloomfield Township, Michigan on 30 July 1975 to take care of their problems, and the two men drove there, waiting for D'Allesandro's associates Anthony Giacalone and Anthony Provenzano to show up. Death At 10:45 PM on 30 July 1975, Hoffa and Ciaro drove to the roadhouse diner in Bloomfield Township, waiting in the gravel parking lot for four hours. Hoffa did not want to leave, and he insisted on waiting for the mobsters to arrive. He sent Ciaro to phone the club, D'Allesandro, and any other mobster who might know the whereabouts of Giacalone and Provenzano, but Ciaro did not find out where they went. Instead, Ciaro brought coffee back to Hoffa several times and repeatedly made calls. At 2:45 PM, Ciaro brought teamster Paddy Dougal out of the diner to bring coffee to Hoffa in the car and thank him for what he had done for the Teamsters; Dougal pretended to use Ciaro's connections to get a "part for his truck" from the union. In reality, Dougal was not having truck problems, and he was looking for Hoffa's location. Ciaro told Dougal to give the tray to Hoffa and thank him, and Dougal asked Hoffa who he was; when Hoffa answered that he was Jimmy Hoffa, Dougal placed the coffee tray on the roof and pulled out a silenced pistol. Ciaro was prevented from intervening by a semi-truck driving in between the car and him, and Dougal shot Hoffa twice in the chest with a silenced pistol before delivering a fatal shot to his forehead. He then proceeded to gun Ciaro down, and he thew Ciaro's body in the back of Hoffa's car. The car was then driven into the back of the semi-truck, which drove the car and the bodies away. Hoffa and Ciaro completely disappeared, and an urban legend would claim that they are buried under Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey. Category:1913 births Category:1975 deaths Category:Americans Category:German-Americans Category:English-Americans Category:Pennsylvania Dutch Category:Protestants Category:Union organizers Category:Criminals Category:Killed Category:Detroit Partnership Category:Republican Party members Category:Michigan Republicans Category:People from Indiana Category:People from Michigan Category:People from Detroit Category:People from Brazil, Indiana